Lou Schwartz: How did you get your first start in broadcasting?

Curt Gowdy: It was in Cheyenne, Wyoming. I just got out of the Air Core and went into the Mayo Clinic to have a spinal operation. When I came back home they told me I shouldn't work for six months. About three or four months into the recovery period, a local radio station in Cheyenne called me and said they had a football game the next day and they wanted to know if I would broadcast it. I told them that I had never broadcast anything in my life and I didn't know anything about it, but the manager said he knew that I played basketball at Wyoming and I was a sports person. Also, if I didn't do it, he and his wife would, since there was no one else around because it was during the war in 1943. I told him I would call him back with an answer and after thinking it over I decided to do it. I went down to a vacant lot at 7 am the next morning and there were two soap boxes sitting there and an old fashioned mike. There was a kid standing there so I walked up to him and he introduced himself. He said he was there to do the commercials. Apparently, they sold the game for $50 to 10 sponsors and they would pay me $5 to do the game. I looked out onto the field and there were no yard lines, goal lines or side lines. Just two goal posts. Just then, a school bus drove up and let out the two teams. One was from Pine Bluffs and the other was St. Mary's, a small Catholic school in Cheyenne. I asked the coaches for the team rosters but they didn't have them. The next thing I knew the whistle blew and the game had started. I ended up making up the whole game and all the names of the players. I used names of players I played basketball with and guys who were with me in the Air Force. I got home that night and the station manager called me and said, "You're a natural play-by-play announcer. Would you like to do our high school basketball games this winter?" I told him I would since I needed something to do and that was the start of my career in broadcasting. In the future, when I would be doing the Rose Bowl, the Super Bowl or the World Series, I would think back to that vacant lot and those two soap boxes and realize how lucky I was to get started in broadcasting.

LS: Do you remember your first salary?

CG: It was $30 a week at KMBC in Cheyenne, Wyoming. I worked five or six days and I did everything from sports to news to disc jockey. It was the greatest education I ever got.

LS: When did you get your first big break?

CG: I got two big breaks in my life. The first was when I was broadcasting a high school basketball game in 1945 in Cheyenne and a man named Ken Brown, who was the manager of KOMA, a 50,000 watt CBS station in Oklahoma City, heard the game. He was in his car so he pulled over and asked about me and who I was and where he could contact me. I got home from the game around 10:30 that night and the phone rang and it was him. At first, I thought it was somebody kidding me because I used to get prank phone calls from the guys in town saying it was Bill Stern or Ted Husing so I thought it was a joke. So I said, "C'mon, who is this?" So he said, "My name is Ken Brown, the station manager of KOMA and I want to talk to you about something you might be interested in." He said he would be checking into a local hotel and invited me down to have breakfast with him. By then I was convinced this was for real so the next morning I went down and had breakfast with him. He said he just acquired the exclusive rights to the University of Oklahoma football. It was the first time they had ever given exclusive rights to a station. He told me that his sports director was giving him some trouble but he wanted to be loyal to him so he was giving him some time to get his act together. He asked me if it didn't work out with his sports director would I be interested in coming down. Of course I said yes and in June he fired his sports director and offered me the job to do the Oklahoma football games.

LS: How many sports did you do?